There’s a temptation to treat the word “hibernation” like a metaphor borrowed from a storybook: cute, slightly dramatic, not literal. But this monsoon I learned to take the idea seriously — not because humans sleep through seasons the way bears do, but because the rains handed me a shape of time I hadn’t felt in years: smaller, wetter, and kinder. Two months of that weather and a handful of ordinary rituals rearranged my days. I came back quieter, with simpler appetites and a clearer way of moving through mornings.
If you want the short version: the monsoon doesn’t make us hibernate our bodies. It lets us slow our lives.
What real hibernation is — in one paragraph
Animals that hibernate enter controlled, physiological slowdowns: heart rate eases, metabolism drops, the body conserves energy until the world tilts back toward abundance. Humans don’t do that. But we do something nearly as useful: we change habits and environments in ways that let the nervous system rest. The monsoon can be that cultural, behavioral hibernation — a season-shaped permission to be smaller.
The small, ordinary things that felt like medicine
This is the lived middle of the piece — the part where I stop explaining and start remembering. These are the rituals that folded the rain into my body and made time feel softer.
Bathing in fresh well-water at dawn
There’s a particular smell the morning has after a night of rain — cold and metallic, like the world has been rinsed. I walked down to the well barefoot, the water slicing the sleep from my skin. The first shock is clean and sharp; the second is gentleness. After a week of those mornings the chest unclenched a little. The mind arrived without shouting. It’s a small correction: alertness with calm.
Oiling my head like someone taught me how to bless the day
My wife’s family pours oil warm and slow; fingers find the temples and map small, careful circles. I used to shrug at the ritual. Now I miss it when I don’t do it. There’s more than scent and warmth here — there’s touch, and touch is a direct line to feeling cared for. The nights grew steadier, the mornings softer. The oil smelled like patience.
Dinner before nine — a quiet compact with the dark
We started closing the day earlier, less out of asceticism and more out of courtesy to the night. Food lighter, conversation quieter, screens dimmed. A long nightly fast is not a punishment; it’s a small agreement between stomach and sleep. When your digestion is given its own night, everything else wakes kinder.
Malayalam poetry and Mohammed Rafi — voices that steady
There is a safety in the sounds you grew up with. Reading a poem aloud, letting a Rafi line unfurl — they are tethers. They remind you where you come from, and that sense of place dissolves urgency. It’s not only nostalgia. It’s a biochemical kind of recognition: familiar cadence lowers the volume of anxiety.
Sleeping in a closed room with wooden windows, in complete darkness
Draw the wooden shutters. No streetlight spilling in. The room becomes a cave of evening. Darkness is not absence here; it’s repair. Without stray notifications and blue light, sleep resumes its old work. Morning stops feeling like something stolen from you.
Walking in the evenings — small pilgrimages on wet paths
These weren’t workouts. They were unburdenings: sandals on wet earth, crushed leaves, frog-chorus from the pond. Walking slows thought into manageable pieces. Problems lose their grandeur when the world is wet and forgiving.
Why these small things actually help (briefly and plainly)
There’s science in the poetry: calmer environments and predictable routines reduce stress; darkness and regulated meal times help circadian rhythms; touch and ritual reduce perceived stress and deepen sleep. But you don’t need a paper or a lab to notice the difference — the body shows you. Sleep deepens. Appetite settles. Conversations become less performative and more true. The point is not to copy an animal’s biology; it’s to create conditions where repair can happen.
Ayurveda calls seasonal practices ritucharya — simple, affordable prescriptions: oiling, rhythm, food aligned to the sun. They were practical tools in a world without 24/7 light and instant news. They still work because they are low-cost, high-return habits: a warm oiling, a slow walk, an early dinner. In a city that never pauses, the monsoon offers the social permission to try them.
A gentle prescription if you want your own month of hibernation
— Choose three rituals and protect them: a dawn bath, an early dinner, and a 20-minute evening walk.
— Make your sleeping room as dark as you can.
— Do one small Ayurvedic ritual each night — scalp oiling or a brief self-massage.
— Spend 48–72 hours somewhere green and quiet if you can. The first day is rough; the second day starts to feel like a gift.
— Treat this as practice, not performance.
Closing — an invitation, not a command
Call it hibernation, sabbatical, or simply a pause. The name is less important than the permission. The monsoon, with its hush and wetness, gives us a logical reason to slow: rain makes the streets quieter, the night longer, the kitchen smellier, the world less urgent. Use the weather as an ally. Give yourself a small season to be smaller.
If this piece landed somewhere useful, try one small thing this week: a dark bedroom for one night, or an early dinner. See what changes. If you want, I’ll write a printable “Monsoon Hibernation Checklist” or a short playlist of Malayalam poems and Rafi songs that made my rainy nights softer.
— Akash
P.S. If you liked this, subscribe for more small experiments in work, rest, and the margins between. Share with someone who needs permission to slow.